Joining in the attacks on Palin, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s former speechwriter, wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week that Republicans should stop defending her wayward behaviour. “She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.”
She also dismissed the idea that Palin was a champion of hearty middle American values, arguing that she had been created by McCain and the media she purports to despise. “She is a complete elite confection,” Noonan wrote. “She might as well have been a bonbon.”
Levi Johnston, 19, the estranged father of Palin’s teenage daughter’s baby, claimed last week that the opportunity to make money from her book, television and the talk show circuit was behind Palin’s decision to resign. She talked about “how nice it would be to take some of this money people have been offering us and just run with it, and saying, ‘Forget everything else’”, he said.
Prominent Republicans, including governors who are seeking reelection, are proving reluctant to invite her to speak or fundraise for them, despite her ability to garner crowds, until her motives for quitting and future plans are clearer.
If Obama’s team did help to derail her, it succeeded spectacularly. She is just one of several leading conservatives whose presidential aspirations have imploded in the past few weeks.
Mark Sanford, the married Republican governor of South Carolina, severely embarrassed his party after flying secretly to Argentina for a tryst with his mistress and then babbling about his love for her nonstop on television. But for Palin’s problems, which drove his adultery off the front page, he might already have been forced from office.
The same goes for John Ensign, a Nevada senator who is facing increasing pressure from his own side to resign after it was revealed that his parents paid $96,000 hush money to his mistress and her family in an apparent bid to keep news of his affair secret.
The claim by Ensign’s lawyer that the money was paid “out of concern for the wellbeing of long-time family friends during a difficult time” has failed to impress even the senator’s closest allies.
“The Republicans are dropping like flies,” said Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia. “The party is beginning to look third rate. It could take a generation for the Republicans to return to power, as with the Tories after Margaret Thatcher.” |
